This page features brief excerpts of stories published by the mainstream
media and, less frequently, blogs, alternative media, and even obviously
biased sources. The excerpts are taken directly from the websites cited in
each source note. Quotation marks are not used.
Source: WaPo
Jan 16, 2007
At the stroke of midnight on Dec. 31, something profound happened in the government secrecy system. With little fanfare, the paradigm of secrecy shifted.
The days when secrets would be secret forever officially ended that night. Some 700 million pages of secret documents became unsecret. No longer were they classified. They became . . . public. Imagine it: Some 400 million formerly classified pages at the National Archives, another 270 million at the FBI, 30 million elsewhere, all e
Source: NYT
Jan 16, 2007
For what experts say is probably the first time, more American women are living without a husband than with one, according to a New York Times analysis of census results.
In 2005, 51 percent of women said they were living without a spouse, up from 35 percent in 1950 and 49 percent in 2000.
Coupled with the fact that in 2005 married couples became a minority of all American households for the first time, the trend could ultimately shape social and workplace policies, inc
Source: CNN
Jan 15, 2007
COLUMBIA, South Carolina (AP) -- Sen. Joseph Biden, a Democratic presidential hopeful joining fellow Sen. Christopher Dodd at Martin Luther King Jr. holiday events, said Monday he thinks the Confederate flag should be kept off South Carolina's Statehouse grounds.
"If I were a state legislator, I'd vote for it to move off the grounds -- out of the state," the Delaware senator said before the civil rights group held a march and rally at the Statehouse here to support its boy
Source: Jerusalem Post
Jan 15, 2007
An immense bedrock cliff uncovered opposite Jerusalem's Temple Mount may help explain why it took the Romans so long to capture what is now known as the Jewish Quarter almost two millenia ago, an Israeli archeologist said Sunday.
The cliff, uncovered during a year-long excavation at the western edge of the Western Wall Plaza, was one of several important finds that include the remains of a colonnaded street called the Eastern Cardo, dating from the Roman-Byzantine period; a section
Source: Sau Landau at Counterpunch
Jan 15, 2007
After 9/11, George Bush began firing fear-loaded spitballs at Congress and the media, which reacted by being frightened. Five years and three months later, Gore Vidal in Havana countered W’s discords of panic with chimes of truth.
On December 12, at the University of Havana, Vidal dismissed “our little President” (“presidentcito,” said the interpreter) and mocked him into proper perspective – the worst and most dangerous president in US history: “I’m a wartime president.” The audi
Source: Independent (UK)
Jan 15, 2007
Their hair, once a symbol of youthful rebellion, is now shot through with grey. Bodies that writhed with wild abandon to psychedelic music sport stiff knees and wrinkles.
"How many of you are on acid right now?" rock critic Joel Selvin asked an audience of former hippies who turned out yesterday to mark the 40th anniversary of the Human Be-in, the counterculture event that set the stage for the Summer of Love. "How many of you are on antacid right now? "
Source: MSNBC
Jan 15, 2007
Ruby Bridges was just six years old when she became the face of school integration in 1960. Now, as NBC's Martin Savidge reports, she's helping to save the school that made her famous.
Source: MSNBC
Jan 15, 2007
Would France have been better off under Queen Elizabeth II?
The revelation that the French government proposed a union of Britain and France in 1956 — even offering to accept the sovereignty of the British queen — has left scholars on both sides of the Channel puzzled.
Newly discovered documents in Britain’s National Archives show that former French Prime Minister Guy Mollet discussed the possibility of a merger between the two countries with British Prime Minister Sir
Source: San Francisco Chronicle
Jan 15, 2007
Many of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.'s most formative writings and sermons -- some dating to when King was a precocious 19-year-old seminary student in 1948 -- languished for decades in a battered cardboard box.
A decade before her death in 2006, King's widow, Coretta Scott King, flew to San Francisco to ask Stanford Professor Clayborne Carson to examine and write about the box's contents.
The texts, which illuminate the theological foundations that America's most
Source: WaPo
Jan 15, 2007
In a recent survey of college students on U.S. civic literacy, more than 81 percent knew that the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. was expressing hope for "racial justice and brotherhood" in his historic "I Have a Dream" speech.
That's the good news.
Most of the rest surveyed thought King was advocating the abolition of slavery.
The findings indicate that years of efforts by primary and secondary schools to steep young people in the basics o
Source: Chronicle of Higher Education
Jan 15, 2007
Debate over the proposed George W. Bush presidential library at Southern Methodist University intensified on the campus last week when a group of faculty members sent a letter to the university's president, R. Gerald Turner, asking for a" campuswide dialogue" on the role and effect the library would have at SMU.
According to the letter, faculty members at the Dallas institution are concerned that an acc
Source: The Australian
Jan 15, 2007
Displays of Nazi symbols such as swastikas could be banned across Europe under a German proposal put to European Union members overnight.Germany will also seek to make denial of the Holocaust a crime punishable by up to three years' imprisonment during its six-month presidency of the EU.
German Justice Minister Brigitte Zypries was expected to outline details of the proposed law, that would punish anyone in the EU who publicly rejected the Nazi slaughter of six
Source: AP
Jan 15, 2007
Would France have been better off under Queen Elizabeth II? The revelation that the French government proposed a union of Britain and France in 1956 _ even offering to accept the sovereignty of the British queen _ has left scholars on both sides of the Channel puzzled.Newly discovered documents in Britain's National Archives show that former French Prime Minister Guy Mollet discussed the possibility of a merger between the two countries with British Prime Minister Sir Anthon
Source: Legal History (Blog run by Mary Dudziak)
Jan 15, 2007
The U.S. Commission on Civil Rights and the Thurgood Marshall Law Library at the University of Maryland announce a joint project to make records of the Civil Rights Commission available on-line. The press release, below, refers to the Civil Rights Act (presumably meaning the Civil Rights Act of 1964), but of more value to researchers will be Commission reports, such as a 1961 report on voting rights, available here
Source: AFP at Yahoo News
Jan 14, 2007
he government launched a comprehensive study of 83 historic battlefields scattered across Ireland where Irish, British, French, Spanish and other European forces fought.
"The public has long been fascinated by tales of martial valour, dramatic success and ignominious defeat on the battlefield," Environment Minister Dick Roche said at the launch of a two-year study in 20 of Ireland's 26 counties.
"This major new initiative would research the key battlefiel
Source: Yahoo
Jan 14, 2007
PETERSBURG, Kentucky (Reuters) - Ken Ham's sprawling
creation museum isn't even open yet, but an expansion
is already underway in the state-of-the art lobby,
where grunting dinosaurs and animatronic humans
coexist in a Biblical paradise.
A crush of media attention and packed preview sessions
have convinced Ham that nearly half a million people a
year will come to Kentucky to see his Biblically
correct version of history.
Source: AP
Jan 14, 2007
Monday is a Utah state holiday and a federal holiday honoring Martin Luther King Jr. -- except for the state's legislators, who report to work that same day every year to open their annual session.
Civil rights leaders say the state -- which doesn't have a single black legislator -- should be ashamed of itself.
''They really should be embarrassed,'' said Jeanetta Williams, president of the Salt Lake branch of the NAACP. ''It does frustrate me -- very much.''
Source: NYT
Jan 14, 2007
With growing faculty unease over plans to enshrine President Bush’s official papers and a policy institute at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, the process of creating the nation’s 13th presidential library is off to a familiar start: discord.
On Thursday, 68 theologians, professors and other faculty members present and past, citing complaints about President Bush’s “poor marks” on civil liberties, the environment, gay rights and the war in Iraq, sent the university president
Source: NYT
Jan 14, 2007
Germany wants to use its European Union presidency to push through legislation that would make denying the Holocaust punishable by stiff prison sentences in all 27 of the union’s member states.
Germany’s justice minister, Brigitte Zypries, said Thursday night that Germany’s commitment to combating racism and xenophobia — and keeping the memory of the Holocaust alive — was both an enduring historical obligation and a present-day political necessity.
Source: NYT
Jan 14, 2007
NOBODY will quibble with President Bush’s line Wednesday night that in Iraq, “Victory will not look like the ones our fathers and grandfathers achieved; there will be no surrender ceremony on the deck of a battleship.”...
[What might victory look like?]
Remember the Spanish Civil War? The best America can hope for, some experts said, would be for Iraq to turn into today’s version of the Spanish Civil War.
For readers without immediate access to Wikipedia, t
